The InnovatED Blog

Tips and Strategies for School Facebook Pages

Facebook is a prime tool for school marketing and branding. Although a school’s website is a means to convert traffic to new parents and students, a school’s Facebook page can be the primary source most times that parents even visit your website to begin with. Parents see their friends like or share your school’s posts and get curious about your school. So much so that they click on your Facebook Page to find the link to your website to check it out for their child.

So, how can schools maximize their Facebook Page to ensure families, teachers and the community stay engaged?

Here are 5 tips for your school’s Facebook Page:

Don’t just use your Facebook as a place to update parents. Share good news, pictures, artwork, and other multimedia on your Facebook Page. Parents are not the only people who have liked your page. Grandparents, board members, and community members are following you so it is important your content is relevant to everyone.

Videos and photos and prime content. Every post on your Facebook Page should include a photo or a video. If you scroll through your timeline on your Facebook account, what do you see in most posts? Videos. They are everywhere! People want quick visuals when getting updates. If you don’t have a photo to include with a post, create a quick image using Canva. This free site allows you to select pre-sized images for social media with quick templates to edit with your information. Hosting an ice cream social? Include an image with ice cream cones and your event info!

Use your Facebook for fundraising! Facebook can have a wide reach depending on how many followers your page has. You can easily share a list of supplies your school is in need of like paper plates or tissue and ask for donations. Also, you can share your Amazon wish list straight from your Amazon Smile account. It is super easy to create your list of items you would like purchased for your school and ask Facebook followers to purchase it right from Amazon and it will automatically be shipped to your school!

Post consistently and often. Once a day, once a week, whatever gets you in the habit. Ideally, most marketing experts state that you should be posting 3 times a day, 7 days a week. It may seem like a lot, but it is necessary to keep the

Utilize a scheduler. There are a number of third-party apps that make it easy to schedule content to post in the future, especially on the weekends. Tools like these make it super simple to schedule out posts for the next week at your desired times so it is one less thing you have to do throughout the work week. This strategy also works well when you have a school event where you know everyone will be busy. Strategically schedule a few reminder posts throughout the day for attendees to stay up to date on logistics and directions.

Coming up with content to post can be intimidating, but know that the more administrators you appoint to your account, the more minds to collaborate on ideas. If you have 3-4 people posting content, you can even assign a time slot for each individual to post at to ensure there is no cross-over throughout the day. If your school has an event, assign one or two people to manage the posts for the day to capture all of the great pictures and videos of students’ smiling faces. Managing a Facebook Page for your school is just as much about quantity as it is about the quality of posts to ensure your school gets in the habit of posting often!

If your school does not have a Facebook Page setup yet, don’t fret, it is super quick and easy. There are many tutorials on setting up a page that can help walk you through the process. Checkout our new School Facebook Toolkit which provides you with more tips and a checklist to evaluate your school’s Facebook page!